When the average person thinks o’ the Bible, they think o’ a few famous stories, like “Genesis,” “Exodus,” “Jonah,” & the 4 gospels, which make up only a tiny percentage o’ its bulk, most o’ which is made up o’ forgettable fluff o’ random Jews like Isaiah & Jeremiah1 ranting for pages & pages ’bout Jews being sinful, & all o’ Paul’s repetitive letters ranting @ Christians in almost incoherent ways2 ’bout being lazy & cheap bums & their insistence on the need to have the fetish for chopping baby boy penises—look, Jesus is no bigot: he’s neither gainst nor for baby-boy-penis-chopping.
But the best o’ the Bible is found in neither those famous books, nor any o’ that other dreck, but randomly buried in “2 Kings,” which is a loose collection o’ stories in which shitty things happen to Jews—also known as “What Happens in Real Life All the Time Throughout History.”
I present to you, what the New International Version calls, “Elisha Is Jeered” (chapter 2:23-24):
23From there Elisha went up to Bethel. As he was walking along the road, some youths came out of the town and jeered at him. “Go on up, you baldhead!” they said. “Go on up, you baldhead!” 24He turned around, looked at them and called down a curse on them in the name of the LORD. Then two bears came out of the woods and mauled forty-two of the youths. 25And he went on to Mount Carmel and from there returned to Samaria.
& for the record, no, this story has no relevance to anything surrounding it & could be taken out without affecting the narrative @ all. ¿But why would you want to cut out such a hilariously awesome scene?
E’en mo’ hilarious, 1 o’ my Bible’s many pretentious footnotes3 feels the need to establish that ’twasn’t Elisha who sicked the bears on them, but God, & that ’twasn’t for mocking Elisha’s bald head but for doubting God’s bear-spawning powers.
As an extra, here’s a gem from “1 Chronicles” 21:14:
Satan rose up against Israel and incited David to take a census of Israel.
Thank you, Bible, for inspiring thousands o’ gun nuts round the US to bring out their shotguns & threaten ’way those sinful gubbernit officials & their Satanic censuses.
Yeah, I know it’s s’posed to be a parable ’bout David’s pride in the hefty #s o’ his military; but that still doesn’t warrant the ridiculous melodrama o’ having Satan personally act “gainst Israel” in making a king act pompous—as if that’s not how every king that e’er existed has acted. I don’t remember the Bible talking ’bout Satan rising up gainst Israel when Solomon had o’er 700 wives.
O, all right, let’s talk ’bout a few mo’ lines.
Going back to “Kings,” I love how it keeps saying, “As for the other events of Solomon’s reign—all he did and the wisdom he displayed—are they not written in the book of the annals of Solomon?” (11:41), only for the footnote below it to say, “Nothing is known of ‘the book of the annals of Solomon.’ So I guess the answer to your question, narrator, is, “No.”
But ’nough ’bout that downer—how ’bout this great moral for good Christians from the great Apostle Paul himself (“2 Corinthians,” chapter 8:14-15):
14At the present time your plenty will supply what they need, so that in turn their plenty will supply what you need. Then there will be equality, 15as it is written: “He who gathered much did not have too much, and he who gathered little did not have too little.”
Translation: “From each according to his ability, to each according to his need.”
I’m glad to see my favorite US Constitutional amendment is supported by the other official US Constitution. It’s too bad I posted this a month too late: that would’ve made a great moral in which to celebrate Christmas Marxmas.
Though, my Bible, in an obvious attempt to mollify right-wingers, made sure to include a footnote in a later part in “Acts” chapter 4 talking ’bout apostles sharing things ’mong themselves that insisted it wasn’t communism ’cause ’twas s’posedly voluntary & s’posedly didn’t include all “private property” (personal property), which doesn’t apply in any communist system, either. This was sort o’ like the footnote for “2 Samuel” 1:26, which had to insist that King David’s claim that Jonathan’s “love for [him] was wonderful / more wonderful than that of women” was totally not gay.
But lets end this with the best, most profound moral o’ all, by Jesus himself (“Matthew” 5:13):
You are the salt of the earth. But if the salt loses its saltiness, how can it be made salty again?
That’s some Tsen shit right there.
